A bell person story
Part One
There’s a Bell Person in this area who scares the pants off more people than me, and I am not unique in getting a good grip on my trousering when she’s in the vicinity, but my grip may be a little more convulsive than most. She’s a very, very good ringer and has been ringing forever and while intellectually she knows that it takes most people years (and, possibly, more years) to learn to ring even half-competently, the kind of same-old same-old mistakes that most of us make and go on helplessly making, make her nuts. And when she’s feeling nuts, you know it.
I give her enormous credit for the amount of time, energy and effort she puts into bell ringing–including being a tireless member of the steady bands that ring the endless touches of the same few methods for the latest beginners to bounce and careen off of. This district would be immeasurably poorer without her. And, disregarding the marks she leaves, she’s taught me personally a lot too–but there are days/evenings/practises/formal rings I’ve found myself pulling a rope in her company when I’ve really really wished I’d taken up knitting instead–and I’m likelier to go wrong if she’s ringing too. A few of our encounters have left permanent scars. Sigh.
One of the things that makes her so valuable is that if she’s asked to ring for an occasion, if she can, she will. She’s retired, and she can organise her time to suit herself, and she is very committed to bell-ringing. As a result she’s at the top of everyone’s lists to ask to fill in if someone’s short. So you’re never, you know, safe, because she could pop up anywhere. And she goes to other people’s practises too, and they’re always really glad to see her because her presence usually means (in towers like mine, for example) that they’ll have enough to ring Thumpty Something Double Whim Wham Surprise, which they wouldn’t've if it were just us. Other good ringers like her fine. It’s us rank and file that tend to have the problem.
Unfortunately, for my sins I’m on people’s fill-in lists too. I’m at the bottom of the list because I’m a shi . . . mediocre ringer: but I’m professionally free lance so I’m potentially available during office hours and for awkwardly scheduled events, and, as I keep saying, I believe in bells for events, so I too if I’m asked will ring if I can. Even more unfortunately this state of affairs has led to my name having been eventually put on her list–let’s call her Boadicea–oh, yeep. I don’t hear from her often, but it tends to be memorable when it happens.
A few weeks ago I picked up the phone and it was Boadicea. I didn’t scream and put it down again, although I twitched violently (how glad I am videophone is not standard equipment yet). A local tower was two short for their carol service and they’d asked her if she could come and perhaps bring a friend. It crossed my mind to wonder how many people she’d already asked before she got to me, but mine not to reason why. I could do it, so, rather grimly, I said yes: Not only do I have to ring with her, which means I’m already a big black mark below my erratic best, but it’s at a half-strange tower with half-strange people for a wholly public gig–and one of the reasons Boadicea and I don’t get along too well, aside from my total lack of talent for ringing, is that she has no sympathy with nerves, and if you took my nerviness away all that would be left is water and ash*.
She said she’d pick me up. So it gets better and better–now it turns out we have to share a car. But she has to drive right through this town to get to where we’re both going, so even back in the days of environmental innocence and 25 pre-decimal pence a litre for petrol** I wouldn’t have had any excuse to say no.
She was very subdued on the day. I don’t chat too well anyway, and especially not to her, so I didn’t realise right away that the reason why is that she was ill: for one thing you don’t think of someone like Boadicea getting ill: You think of her out there in her bronze miniskirt and her sword, with the rotating blades spinning viciously around the hubs of her war chariot wheels creating hamburger out of the unwary. But she had bronchitis, and by the time we arrived at the tower it was clear to me she shouldn’t be ringing at all, she should be home in bed. I understood what was going on: she’d promised to ring, and she was going to ring. Last minute drop outs mean the bells don’t get rung. But I still had to repress the impulse to say one of those useless phrases like, Are you sure you’re all right to do this?, which most people would take as a gesture of friendly sympathy and say, yes, I’m fine–and which would cause Boadicea to tear your head off and feed it to the orcs that pull her chariot. I remained silent.
The first thing that went wrong is that we were the only people there on time. We were there early (of course). So Boadicea was already perhaps feeling a trifle frayed by the time the other four ringers came drifting in. We’d got the bells rung up–and again, Boadicea should not have been put to the extra effort: the rest of us should have got the bells up while Boadicea sat in a corner wrapped in a blanket drinking hot toddy, not that she would have, but if there’d been five other ringers there on time even she, I think, would have let us get on with it.
But it was worse than that. . . .
CONTINUED TOMORROW.
Hey. Sorry. Yes, I’m a cow. But I’ve got to cut down on the time I’m spending on the blog, and if one thing doesn’t work, try something else.
* * *
* Yes. I wonder almost hourly what the big attraction to bell ringing is for me, aside from my obstinate streak having a strange sense of humour. I’ve not only got no gift for either the mechanics or the music of ringing, it is a completely other-shape-of-brain thing from the things I can do and it makes perfect sense that I’m no good at it. And I suffer spectacularly from stage fright and between the stage fright and the mediocrity I’m dangerous in a strange tower. I’m not safe in my own. You can perhaps surmise how critical the bell-ringer situation is that someone like me is in, you know, demand. You, go find a tower and learn to ring. We need you.
** I didn’t live here yet, nor ring bells
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